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Xaden could not shake the feeling that he was forgetting something. The feeling had dogged him all day and he was no closer to figuring out what exactly it was that he was supposed to be forgetting. He was starting to think the creeping feeling that he was forgetting something was just his tired brain trying to make sure he kept up with everything and getting overactive.
He was exhausted. He’d struggled to sleep ever since the night his father and shaken him awake in the dead of night and explained that Navarre had lied to them all and made them all complicit in a multitude of deaths through those lies and that he and those with him were going to make things right. Right now was especially bad, though. Xaden’s eyes burned and he felt unspeakably heavy. The amount of time he spent thinking longingly about lying down was troubling to say the least. He tried his best to soldier on, though, because some things just couldn’t be helped.
That didn’t mean it wasn’t bad. He was even having a hard time focusing on his training session with Violet, which was saying something because he never had trouble paying attention to Violet Sorrengail. That didn’t stop him from knocking her off her feet repeatedly however.
“You know one of these days I’m going to get you and you’re going to be so shocked you won’t be able to speak,” Violet clambered back to her feet and took up position again, her fists bristling with knives. “Let’s go again!”
“Actually, I think that might be it for tonight,” a voice said.
Xaden and Violet turned to see Garrick standing at the edge of the mat.
“It’s getting pretty late,” Garrick said. “And it gets really cold in here at night.” He gave Xaden a raised eyebrow that only made Xaden feel more like he’d forgotten something important. “And dark,” Garrick went on. “Given there’s no moon tonight.”
Memory smashed into Xaden and all at once he knew exactly what he’d forgotten. He only barely managed to keep from putting his head in his hands. They were supposed to go on a weapons smuggling run tonight. He couldn’t believe he’d forgotten.
“Garrick’s right,” he told Violet. “Think about what we’ve worked on tonight and we’ll train again tomorrow evening.”
He and Garrick lingered in the training room while Violet gathered her things and left. “I watched that last bout,” Garrick said when they were sure she was gone. “She is improving.”
“Not fast enough,” Xaden grumbled. The knot that formed in his stomach was either anxiety about something happening to him if something happened to Violet due to Sgaeyl and Tairn’s stupid mating bond, or anxiety about something happening to Violet regardless of its effect on him. He sure as hell knew which option would be more inconvenient. He sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve made us late. It entirely slipped my mind.”
He braced himself for tense, only half-joking nettling about him being distracted by Lilith Sorrengail’s daughter but Garrick just took him by the shoulders and turned him slightly to get a better look at his face. Garrick frowned. “When was the last time you slept, Xaden?”
“Last night,” Xaden said.
“For how long?”
It had been for perhaps an hour just before dawn after a whole night of tossing and turning, but Garrick didn’t need to know that. “I’m fine,” he said.
“You’re sure?” Garrick pushed. “It’s late and it’s going to be freezing cold. You look really tired. Bodhi and I can handle the handoff if you want to stay where its warm and rest. Or you can assign someone else to come with us.”
Briefly, Xaden thought about sending Imogen, but had to admit that they were far beyond the point at which simply sending Imogen and Garrick to do things together might result in Garrick realizing Imogen had feelings for him. Xaden was tempted to just tell Garrick with increasing frequency of late, but Imogen had made him and Bodhi promise not to interfere and things hadn’t yet reached a level of ridiculousness where he felt he was allowed to break that promise.
“I said that I was fine,” he told Garrick and twisted out of the other man’s grasp before heading for the door. “Did you and Bodhi get things ready to go?”
“Yeah,” Garrick said. “We got bored waiting for you so everything should be ready.”
That was a weaker jab than Xaden probably deserved for spending time with one of the Sorrengails who hadn’t chosen the right side of the apostasy when there were important things to be done. He allowed it without comment. “Then we should be able to leave right away?” he asked. Garrick nodded and they left the training room.
~~~~
The late-night flight from Basgiath to Athebyne remained the most nerve-wracking thing Xaden did on a regular basis. After a couple years, it had become mostly routine, but it turned out routine was different than safe or boring.
Absolute secrecy was necessary. A trio of marked ones caught flying their dragons far from Basgiath without leave would be severely punished under the best of circumstances. Being caught with a load of Tyrrish weapons would probably lead to Navarre deciding they were all too dangerous to live. That had been the main stumbling point among the marked ones of Xaden’s year when they’d first discussed offering aid to Poromiel. It was one thing to risk their own lives and quite another to risk the lives of all the younger ones, especially the youngest whose fostering with Navarrian loyalists might mean they didn’t even understand what their parents had really died for. Eventually they’d all agreed that they needed to do something, to be able to live with themselves and the unquiet ghosts of their parents, but thinking about it too hard still made the scars on Xaden’s back sting.
There was no reliable or secure way to contact the gryphon fliers from Basgiath, so when they first started smuggling Tyrrish weapons out of Navarre, Xaden and Garrick had taken the risk of setting up a recurring meeting time. Every few months during the new moon they would slip out and fly to a lake near Athebyne where Syrena and her fliers would meet them for the handoff. The repetitiveness was a risk, but they’d concluded that it was less of one than trying to send messages would be.
The trip involved a moonless night flight at high altitude which was always a fraught proposition, because those were poor conditions for any human to function under, especially in the winter. It was bitter cold, especially so high up. Xaden’s fingers and toes went numb and so did his nose despite the thick muffler he’d wrapped around his face. There was also the necessity of not passing out from the thin air and falling from Sgaeyl’s back. Xaden had put in so many high-altitude training hours that he was stronger in this area than some of the Basgiath’s instructors but he was still light-headed by the time they plummeted from the heights for the final part of their journey.
They still had some miles to go, but they’d make the final approach flying very low to avoid being seeing by the dragon riders stationed at Athebyne. Xaden took a moment to put his head down on Sgaeyl’s back to ease his dizziness until he could breathe normally again. He still clung tightly to her, even though she was flying relatively evenly. Sgaeyl had not been the kind of dragon who didn’t care if her rider fell to their death even when they’d been newly bonded, but if he fell off at this low altitude she wouldn’t be able to catch him before he hit the ground.
“Are you alright?” Sgaeyl asked. Her tone in his head was so breezy and disinterested that he knew she was really worried. Sgaeyl tended to act her most unconcerned when she was actually very concerned.
“I’m alright,” Xaden assured her. “Just getting my breath back.”
“You’re very tired,” Sgaeyl said. “You do realize that your mental processing speed is down and your reflexes are shot, don’t you?”
“No, but I suppose that doesn’t really surprise me,” he admitted. Though he had to admit that the fact that he hadn’t noticed that himself was a bit worrying. He straightened up on Sgaeyl’s back. “It can’t be too bad, though, since I wasn’t so slow that Violet could beat me this evening.”
“Or the Silver One is just not much of a fighter,” Sgaeyl said.
“I can’t believe you’ve picked up Tairn’s nickname for her,” Xaden said, trying to ignore the spike of fear that stabbed through him at the thought that Violet might never be a proficient fighter and would always be a weakness to him.
“Sure, that’s why you’re so worried about her, keep telling yourself that,” Sgaeyl said with dripping sarcasm. “You are aware of the constellation of fascinating reactions you have to the mere thought of her, aren’t you?”
“We’re not discussing this,” Xaden told her.
Sgaeyl cackled out a sound he knew from experience was a dragon laugh. “You’ve got it bad, Xaden.”
“I do not!” he protested. Sgaeyl laughed even harder. “I don’t!”
“You’ve never struck me as the type of self-deluding lies,” she said.
The mild rebuke stung. “Fine, maybe I do, but it hardly matters. She’s Lilith fucking Sorrengail’s daughter, Sgaeyl.”
The reminder popped the bubble of Sgaeyl’s levity. “Fair,” she allowed. Tairn might be convinced that Violet would choose to do the right thing when confronted with the reality her family was invested in hiding from, but Sgaeyl and Xaden were less sure. It was a subject of much anxiety between them. Xaden wanted Violet to choose to join him and the marked ones but optimism was not a quality he could be accused of having.
“You really do desperately need sleep, Xaden,” Sgaeyl changed the subject. “You should have taken Garrick up on his offer for you to stay home tonight and rest.”
“It wouldn’t have helped,” Xaden admitted. It was easier to say this to Sgaeyl then it would have been to Garrick, perhaps because Sgaeyl probably already knew. “I can’t sleep. I would have been awake until they got back anyway and least this way I have something to do other than be alone with my own thoughts.” A pause then he decided some reassurance was in order, “I’ll be fine. It comes in waves, you know that. Just give it a couple weeks and it’ll get better.”
Sgaeyl made a noncommittal sound that said that she knew that he was right, but also thought that was poor comfort. Thankfully they were coming up on the lake and that ended their time for conversation.
When they landed on the beach, a drift of gryphons were already there. As they dismounted Syrena strode across the beach towards them. “You’re late,” she said without preamble. “Has something gone wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Garrick assured her. “It just took Xaden a bit longer to get away than we thought it would. No one saw us.”
“Good,” Syrena said. “When you didn’t show we started to fear the worst had happened. You’re lucky you weren’t any later. We were debating clearing out.”
“I’m sorry for the anxiety and for how long you’ve been sitting out in the cold,” Xaden said as he jumped from Sgaeyl’s back and landed on the sand.
“Oh, we haven’t been sitting out in the cold,” Syrena said. “We have a flier who can hide the smoke from fires. We’ve built a fire in those rocks over there. Come sit and warm yourselves. You must be nearly frozen.”
~~~~
The fliers did indeed have a fire burning in the cover between some rocks and there was indeed no smoke to give their location away. There was also strong, hot tea which must have been Poromiel in origin because none of the riders had ever had it before. They warmed themselves by the fire and exchanged news while the fliers examined the weapons they’d brought. Despite the fact that every single one of them would be killed if the dragon riders stationed at Athebyne found them, the little camp was fairly relaxed.
Xaden didn’t remember closing his eyes, but the next thing he knew Garrick was shaking him gently. “Xaden, I’m sorry, but you need to wake up.”
He dragged his heavy eyelids open. At some point he’d listed over until he was slumped against Bodhi, with his head on his cousin’s shoulder. “What?” he managed.
“We’ve waited as long as we can,” Garrick explained. “If we don’t leave now we’re going to miss morning formation.”
“Great,” Xaden forced himself to sit up and rubbed his eyes. He would have thought a nap would have sharpened him somewhat but all it had done was make him groggy. He fought the urge to lie down in the sand and go back to sleep while Garrick and Bodhi gathered their things.
“You going to make it, Xaden?” Garrick asked, holding out a hand to help him up. Xaden realized that he must have drifted off again because the fire was now out, all evidence of it hidden and the gryphon fliers were finishing last minute checks before takeoff.
“Do I have another choice?” he asked Garrick.
Garrick made a face. “Unfortunately, no.”
“Then that answers your question, doesn’t it?” Xaden took Garrick’s hand and let himself be hauled to his feet. “Let’s get back before anyone notices we’re missing.”
~~~~
The wind was at their backs so they made good time on the flight home and landed just outside Basgiath with just over an hour to spare.
“Go to bed,” Garrick told Xaden as they climbed back up the secret passage into the college. “I’ll come and get you just before morning formation. By the time we get back you’ll have maybe an hour. That’s better than nothing.”
“I don’t know why you’re so worried about me,” Xaden said. “You and Bodhi didn’t get any sleep either.”
“Yeah, but we napped after dinner while you were busy with Sorrengail,” Bodhi said. “And neither of us have crippling insomnia.”
“I do not have crippling insomnia,” Xaden protested.
“Oh really?” Bodhi raised his eyebrows. “And how much sleep have you gotten in the last week?”
Xaden honestly had no idea but his best guess would only give Bodhi more ammunition, so he said nothing.
“See,” Bodhi gestured. “My point.”
“Just take the hour and try to sleep,” Garrick put in. “It’ll help.”
Privately, Xaden thought Garrick was being overly optimistic but he agreed to try anyway. Turned out he’d been right to be skeptical because he spent most of the next hour tossing and turning and only managed to nod off fifteen or twenty minutes before Garrick came knocking on his door. The doze had been so light that it hadn’t even really felt like sleep, but at least he wasn’t as groggy as he’d been after waking up by the lake.
Morning formation was even more hellish than usual which was saying something because Basgiath was hell on earth under the best of circumstances. At least he made it through without giving in to his body’s desperate desire to sink down to the ground and pass out. Already he could tell that this was going to be a day of counting small miracles.
After formation was breakfast. He was too tired to be hungry; in fact the thought of eating made his stomach churn. There was coffee, though, and coffee was going to be necessary if he was going to stand any chance of making it through the day. He was on his second cup and vaguely considering how likely he was to fall asleep in class when Garrick tapped urgently on the back of his hand. “Xaden, have you heard anything I’ve been saying to you?”
Xaden shook himself. “What? No, I’m sorry. Could you repeat yourself?”
But Garrick just shook his head. “We need to do something about your insomnia. In addition to being very unhealthy, you being this out of it is unsafe, both for you and for everyone around you. Have you tried talking to the healers?”
Xaden gave him a look. “And what, if anything, do you think the healers of Basgiath would do if the son of Fen Riorson came to them saying he couldn’t sleep?”
Garrick sighed. “Point granted.” It was a well-known truth amongst the marked ones at Basgiath that they received a notably lower level of care from the healers than other riders did. When they’d been first years a girl named Sira had died after a Challenge because a large number of the healers had refused to treat someone with a rebellion mark and the rest hadn’t put much effort into her care. Every year Xaden prayed that a marked one would turn out to be a mender but it hadn’t happened yet.
“Maybe you can ask about it next time we—” Garrick began.
“Maybe I will,” Xaden interrupted. He didn’t really think Garrick would be foolish enough to say words like “Aretia” or “Brennan Sorrengail” in the dining hall of Basgiath but you could never be too careful. Xaden didn’t bother telling Garrick that he couldn’t imagine asking Brennan about something like this. He wasn’t even sure if insomnia was something within a mender’s power to fix.
“You could skip class and try to get some rest,” Garrick suggested. “I could tell people that you’re sick.”
Xaden shook his head. “No one would believe you without proof and when they figured out there’s nothing wrong with me save exhaustion they’d start wondering if maybe we were doing something we shouldn’t have been last night.”
Garrick’s face twisted in a frustrated way that meant he knew Xaden was right but didn’t like it. He leaned in so close that his lips brushed the shell of Xaden’s ear before he whispered, “Fuck this godsforsaken school and every single one of these selfish, sheltered bastards.” Then he leaned back and said in a lighter tone, like the rage they all carried towards the country that had killed their parents for doing the right thing had never boiled to the surface, “I’ll sneak some coffee into Battle Brief for you.”
Xaden forced a smile. “Thanks,” he said. “I’m probably going to need it.”